Eighteen Creepy, Haunted and Abandoned Places in Europe

Some people collect beaches; I collect places that make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. This list began as a Halloween post and grew into something more useful: a guide to abandoned, haunted and generally unsettling places across Europe, told partly through my own visits and partly through travel writers who have stood in the rooms I have only read about.

I have not been to all of them. Where I have not, the account comes from someone who has, and their name and site are credited. A word of warning before you set out: abandoned buildings are dangerous, often illegal to enter, and frequently unstable. Go with a guide, respect closures, and never explore alone.

St Briavel's Castle, England

St Briavel's, in Gloucestershire, has a strong claim to being one of England's most haunted castles, and ghost-hunting groups treat it as a regular destination. Built in the twelfth century, it served as a royal hunting lodge, then a court, then a prison. These days you can sleep in it: a youth hostel occupies part of the Edwardian castle. Guests get a secret dungeon, an old prison whose walls carry sixteenth-century graffiti by inmates, and a candlelit banqueting hall used for medieval feasts. YHA St Briavels takes bookings. If you doubt the stories, Forest Paranormal has filmed investigations there.

More unusual places to stay in Britain: seven alternative long-weekend stays.

Buzludzha, Bulgaria

The flying-saucer monument on Buzludzha peak was built as the headquarters of the Bulgarian Communist Party and is now one of the most photographed ruins in Europe. The roof leaks, the interior mosaic is peeling, and the building is officially closed. That has not stopped determined visitors, who enter at their own risk. Even from outside, the saucer floating on a remote mountain is worth the drive.

Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, Ukraine

Most buildings inside the exclusion zone are too dangerous to enter, but one exception is an old nursery. Inside, books lie scattered across the floor, furniture is overturned, and dolls stare blankly at anyone who comes in. The effect is not gore but absence: a room arranged for children who never came back. Andrew and Emily of Along Dusty Roads described the chill better than I can.

The Royal Palace, Stockholm, Sweden

Stockholm's Royal Palace is one of the largest palaces in the world, and according to court gossip it has long-term residents of a different kind. Two ghosts are regularly reported: the White Lady, said to foretell a death, and the Grey Man, said to appear before each new ruler begins his reign. Some believe the Grey Man is Birger Jarl, the founder of Stockholm. A queen once described them in a documentary as “friendly ghosts”, which is either reassuring or not reassuring at all.

For more on the city, see Stockholm from sunset to moonlight. The Stockholm Ghost Walk covers the stories in ninety minutes; I took it last summer and that is where most of the above comes from.

Sudeley Castle, England

Sudeley Castle sits deep in the Gloucestershire countryside and is said to be haunted by several ghosts. Every Halloween the estate runs a Halloweek of ghost tours and storytelling. On the tour I joined, guides recounted moans from the dungeons, ghost children skipping through the gardens, and queens gliding along the corridors. The most famous is Katherine Parr, Henry VIII's sixth wife, who lived here and is buried in the castle church. During the tour an actress played her: first a figure at the window, easily mistaken for a statue, then suddenly alive and tapping on the glass. It was theatrical, and it worked.

Justine Cross of Wanderer of the World recommends it as a Halloween destination and a year-round one.

Lennox Castle Hospital, near Glasgow, Scotland

Hidden in a wooded estate outside Glasgow, Lennox Castle Hospital opened in 1936 to house people with mental and learning disabilities. It was designed for 1,200 residents and at its peak held 1,700. Patients were starved, sedated, punished and abused; in 1986 the hospital's own medical director said he had never worked in “a worse pit”. It closed in 2002. Most of the complex has been demolished, but the main mansion still stands, its interior badly damaged by a 2008 fire and fenced off for safety. Determined visitors still get inside.

Susanne Arbuckle of Adventures Around Scotland researched the site and found it a grim place to imagine as a patient.

Dětěnice, Czech Republic

Dětěnice is not abandoned so much as theatrical. Deni of The Full Time Tourist arrived at a medieval hotel after dark, past small houses with boarded windows, and was warned by the guide: “Welcome to Dětěnice. If you get scared easily…” Dinner came with a belly dancer stepping onto the tables, a fire-eater, and a man carrying a snake between courses. Back in her room, she fell asleep quickly. At midnight a shot rang out, followed by a cackle and a howl. Whether it is a ghost village or a very committed dinner show is part of the fun.

Cairndhu House, Northern Ireland

Cairndhu House stands in fields along the Antrim coast, a Gothic pile built in 1875 as a stately home and later converted into a convalescence home before closing and decaying in the 1980s. Paranormal Ulster calls it the most haunted house in Northern Ireland. Ryan Platten and Erin Hardie of Down Bubble walked the perimeter and found, in a back alley, what looked like a dried bloody handprint dragged down the wall. They preferred to think it was a prank by local teenagers. So would I.

Varosha, Cyprus

Varosha was once the beach resort Cypriots saved up for. In the mid-1970s, after the Turkish invasion, it was sealed off, and it has been a ghost town ever since. Buildings fall down, trees push through balconies, and nobody goes in. Natasha and Cameron of The World Pursuit viewed it from the border near Ayia Napa, on the Cypriot side, at night: an entire dark city, slowly being swallowed by vegetation.

Kilkea Castle, Ireland

Kilkea Castle in Kildare is the oldest continuously inhabited castle in Ireland, built by Sir Walter de Riddlesford in 1180 and held by the Fitzgerald family for more than seven hundred years. Its ghost is the Wizard Earl, a Fitzgerald who could supposedly change shape. His wife asked him to demonstrate; he warned that if she showed fear he would vanish. She promised not to, and he turned into a blackbird on her shoulder. Then a black cat swiped at the bird, the countess fainted, and the earl disappeared. Locals say he returns every seven years.

Bret Love and Mary Gabbett of Green Global Travel saw no ghosts but stayed in the Ernest Shackleton Suite and ranked it among their favourite places anywhere.

The abandoned Hotel Monte Palace, Azores

Built in the 1980s, the Hotel Monte Palace operated for only a few years before closing, leaving a large structure on a ridge above a lake. Kay Rodriguez of Jetfarer went inside and found remnants of decorative lighting and gold trim in the lobby, intact staircases, and rooms whose windows still frame the water below. The furniture is gone. The views are not. Something about the place, she says, left her spooked — grandeur abandoned is its own kind of haunting. Paulina of Paulina on the Road photographed it.

Chiajna Monastery, Romania

The monastery on the edge of Bucharest was built in the late eighteenth century and has survived Turkish bombardment, plague and long abandonment. That history, plus a few local legends about ghostly inhabitants and visitors who never came out, gave it a reputation. Scott Hornberg of International Hot Dish describes walking through ruins that may still collapse, past tourists posing for photographs. Local advice: go in pairs, and do not become the next story.

The Real Mary King's Close, Edinburgh

Just off the Royal Mile, Mary King's Close was a busy open street until the city built its town hall above it and used the lower floors of the houses as foundations. The street was sealed and forgotten, reopened as a bomb shelter during the Second World War, and later opened to tourists. Guides play former residents and lead visitors through preserved rooms, telling stories of plague, murder and people said to be trapped there still. Kaylie Lewell of Happinesstravelshere took the tour.

Doel, Belgium

Doel is a village on the Dutch border that the Belgian government planned to demolish for a nuclear plant forty years ago. Most residents left. A handful stayed. The result is a place of collapsing houses that look as though their owners left mid-meal: furniture from four decades ago, curtains moving through broken windows, doors half open. Tom Grond of Travel TomTom notes that tourists pass through with cameras during the day, but that you want to be gone by sunset. And who are the few people still living there? Nobody seems sure.

Capela dos Ossos, Faro, Portugal

The bone chapel in Faro is one of several in Portugal, built from thousands of human skulls and bones. It looks like the work of someone obsessed with death until you learn it was built by Carmelite monks as a deliberate reminder of mortality. The inscription over the door makes the intention plain: “Stop here and think of the fate that will befall you.” James Cave of Portugalist recommends it for anyone in the Algarve at Halloween.

Patarei Prison, Tallinn, Estonia

Some places feel sinister without earning it. Patarei Prison earned it. During the Soviet era, Estonians were imprisoned, tortured and executed here, and the sea wind has been slowly demolishing the buildings ever since. Visitors can still walk several of them: dark corridors, collapsing cells, the sound of leaves and wind when everything else goes quiet. Jonathan Sacks of Everybody Hates a Tourist describes hearing, in that silence, the ghosts of the people who died there.

Teufelsberg, Berlin, Germany

Teufelsberg — Devil's Mountain — is a 120-metre artificial hill in Grunewald, built from wartime rubble dumped over an unfinished Nazi military-technical college. During the Cold War the Americans put a listening station on top, staffed around the clock by soldiers commuting from the American sector even though the hill stood in the British sector. The buildings remain, empty and covered in graffiti. Visits are by guided tour only. Anne Steinbach and Clemens Sehi of Travellers Archive suggest going for sunset, for the view over Berlin, before losing yourself in the listening station.

The Bay of Abandoned Hotels, Kupari, Croatia

South of Dubrovnik, Kupari was a holiday resort for the Yugoslav military elite. The collapse of communism and the wars that followed left its hotels empty, and now the lobbies are overgrown and the windows gone. Iris Veldwijk of Mind of a Hitchhiker walked through the Goričine complex and thought she could hear children excited about their holidays, though there was nobody there. She spent a night in the Grand Hotel for the view of the empty boulevard and the quiet shore. It is the Mediterranean's best-dressed kind of spooky.

Before you go

Almost every place on this list is fragile, privately owned, protected, or all three. Check access before travelling, never force a door, and treat closures as final. The stories are the attraction; the buildings do not need to be damaged to prove them.

If you know another place that belongs here, tell me in the comments. And if you are planning a Halloween trip, start with the castles — they are the only ones on the list where you can reasonably sleep overnight.